Massive Google Cloud outage disrupts popular internet services

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW YORK (AP) — Popular online services across the globe were disrupted Thursday due to ongoing issues at Google Cloud.

Tens of thousands of users of Spotify, Discord and other platforms began noticing issues with their services early in the afternoon, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages.

Outage reports for music streamer Spotify in particular, peaked around 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time before dropping off, and some users began saying their access was restored.

Google’s Cloud status page said an incident with their systems affected clients in the U.S. and abroad. The company also posted that services are starting to recover after its engineers identified and began to mitigate the issue.

"We have identified the root cause and applied appropriate mitigations," Google Cloud said. It added that there is no estimate for when the issue would be fully resolved.

Google Cloud, which hosts a significant amount of services on the internet, has become the fastest growing part of Alphabet Inc., even though the company still makes most of its money from Google's ubiquitous search engine. Google Cloud's revenue last year totaled $43.2 billion, a 31% increase from 2023. By comparison, Alphabet's overall revenue grew by 14% last year.